Although all software has limitations, SharePoint has something of a reputation for difficult intranet projects. Often this has more to do with the implementation than with the technology itself. The most successful projects are the ones that manage  to balance business, end user and IT considerations. In this interactive masterclass Sam Marshall will take the audience along the 10 most common mistakes in SharePoint projects. We’ll explore some of the risks, highlight warning signs and share insights into how to keep your SharePoint intranet on track.

1. Avoiding the top 10
SharePoint mistakes
www.clearbox.co.uk
@sammarshall

2. Sam Marshall
Director of ClearBox Consulting
— 15 years intranet and digital
workplace
— Former global portal manager at
Unilever
— Benchmarked over 40 intranets
— Comms, KM & IT background
sam@clearbox.co.uk
@sammarshall

3. ClearBox Consulting
u Intranet, SharePoint and
digital workplace:
— Strategy
— Governance
— Collaboration
— Communities
— Adoption
— Training
u Practical experience
u Transparent
u Vendor-neutral

4. Its good to learn from
your mistakes…
…but it’s a lot
cheaper to learn
from someone
else’s

5. Top 10 SharePoint
mistakes

6. 1. Making it all about the
Head Office

7. Making it all about the Head Office
— Focusing on big deals, high-level
strategy, SVPs
— Giving everyone the same
homepage
— Confusing the head office
location with its role

8. Home
London Paris Rome

9. Global
Rome
Global Global
London Paris

10. Profile
Location = London
Global
London

11. Profile
Location = Rome
Global
Rome

14. Personalised newsfeed stream

15. 2. Promoting silence

16. “Internal communication is the
process by which the bosses tell
everyone what is happening,
followed by a feedback stage
where everyone can tell the
bosses what is really happening.”
—Guy Browning

17. 2. Promoting Silence
— Only letting Comms
professionals write content
• Other people might say
something wrong
— Not letting employees talk
about their concerns
• Or only asking every 2 years
— Believing we can’t do it yet
• We don’t have SharePoint
2013 / Yammer

19. How many comments do
you get on your news
stories?

20. Two way conversations…
— Encourage leaders to join
‘normal’ discussions
— Solve company problems
openly
— Blogs / News comments
• End posts with a question or an
opinion
• ‘Seed’ discussion responses
• Not every executive is cut out
for blogging
• Consider ‘baton passing’
between execs
For more: www.clearbox.co.uk/executive-blogging-how-to-get-started/

21. Don’t ignore My Sites

22. The value of Profiles & Activity Streams
— The interface between
the individual and the
organisation
— Individual context in a
virtual world
— People > People >
Information an effective
search route
Screenshot courtesy of Oakley/Sitrion

23. Community case study – Cap Gemini
Non-­‐work
11%
Opinion
&
clarifica3on
39%
Solve
specific
problem
7%
Informa3on
Sharing
11%
Updates
15%
Help
find
files
/
resources
10%
Other
7%

24. Role of Newsfeed/Yammer - SAFARIS
— Share a link. “Here is a link to the latest report on China Exports”
— Ask a question. “Has anyone encountered this problem before, and if
so, how was it solved?”
— Find a resource. “Looking for a specialist in retirement benefits
to help win a bid in Calgary.”
— Answer a post. “Here are links to three relevant capability
documents in the qualifications database.”
— Recognize a colleague. “Thanks to @dpalmer for hosting an
excellent planning session today.”
— Inform about your activities. “Will be in the Philadelphia office
today; does anyone wish to meet?”
— Suggest an idea. “Local office TV screens should display the
Latest news.”
Source: Deloitte

25. 3.Making it all talk

26. Things on an
intranet home page
Things people want
from an intranet
Message from
CEO
Quarterly
results
Phone
numbers
Rumours
For
sale &
wanted
My own
documents
Bonus
calculation
Lunch
menu
Expense
forms
Photos of
office party
Pictures of
SVPs
Mission
statement
Stock price
Weather

27. 3. Making it all talk
— Filling the homepage with news
— Making people go some other
place for:
• Expenses
• Room booking etc.
— Not letting work get in the way:
• Finding people skills
• Collaboration

29. News Interactive Services

31. Embedded collaboration - Woods Bagot

32. Who sponsors your
SharePoint intranet?

33. Who leads your intranet?
Organisation Need Intranet Flavour Sponsor
Improve communication
2-way, same message for all
Communication Comms Corp Affairs
Work effectively across silos Collaboration
HR IT
Reduce operating costs Services Finance
"One Company" initiatives Communication
Comms Corp Affairs
Improve Capability of a
Function (e.g. Marketing,
Sales, R&D)
Knowledge
Management
Head of Function
Support flexible working Digital Workplace HR
See: www.clearbox.co.uk/what-flavour-is-your-intranet/

34. 4. Hiding all the good stuff

35. 75% said finding the right
information critical to
organization’s business
goals and success
— Findwise survey 2012

36. 14% said finding the right
information was ‘very’ or
‘fairly’ easy
— Findwise survey 2012

37. 4. Hiding all the good stuff
— Structuring content by
who provides it
— Putting a big “search all”
box on the main page
— Keeping the best bits on
your personal drive
• Email the whole
department if a
document ever changes

38. Why is finding SharePoint
content so hard?

39. Why finding stuff is hard…
— Lack of active search management
— Takes dedicated resource
— Content owners don’t care
— Poorly structured content & page layout
— Search is much harder than on the Web
• Fewer providers – more gaps
• Lots of similar hits
• Content in documents, not web pages
• Popularity doesn’t help

40. Should you delete most of
your SharePoint content?

41. Finding information is a combination of
approaches
Search
Alert Browse
From “Enterprise Search” by Martin White (2012)

42. Tips to improve search
— Share analytics and failure-to-find with content owners
— Put a feedback form on your results page
— Use managed metadata, but mandate sparingly
— Define synonyms
— Use entity extraction for terms specific to your org
— Custom dictionary
— All department names
— All your product names
— Promote library-level searches

43. Use find and filter to help in libraries
Search within library if
large Choose columns for
sorting
You can add advanced
filters

44. 5. No channel strategy

45. A scenario:
Imagine your company is moving its head office
and staff to a new location 20km away
What are the ways in which you could use
SharePoint to help plan and communicate this?
— Who needs to know what?
— How much detail?

46. 5. No channel strategy
— Overloading employees
• News announcement
• Email about the news
article
• Manager cascade
• Yammer post
— Treating SharePoint as a
single channel
More: http://kilobox.net/2726

47. 6. Confusing communication &
collaboration

48. SharePoint Pyramid
Team
collaboration
Team or Wiki site
Teams
My Site,
OneDrive
C: Drive
Personal
Group Intranet
Publishing site
Every-one
Department Site
Team or Publishing Site
Peers
Communicating
Collaborating

49. Collaborating or Communicating?
Team
collaboration
Team site
Teams
X
Personal
Group Intranet
Publishing site
Every-one
Department Site
Team or Publishing Site
Peers
X
X
X
X
X
?
?
?
?
? My Site,
OneDrive
C: Drive

50. 6b. Planning SharePoint in isolation
hours days weeks months years
suitability
Phone
IM
Video / Web
Conf / Lync
duration of collab.
Yammer
/
Chatter /
Tibbr
etc.
Doc Management
email
Team sites
mins.
?

51. 7. Too little governance

52. Governance Survey
% agree
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Governance is important We have well defined
governance
http://www.slideshare.net/echo4sharepoint/sharepoint-governance-maturity-benchmark-infographic

53. 7. Too little governance
— Random inconsistencies
— Team site sprawl
— Graveyard sites
— Only technical governance –
defend the platform at all
costs!

54. “Good governance is like having
good brakes on a car, they make it
safer to go faster”
--Ralph O’Brien

55. “No you can’t use rotating gif images on your homepage”

56. 71/2. Too much governance

57. You only need a 200 page
governance document if you
plan to hit somebody with it as
a means of enforcement

59. Balanced governance
Policy
People
Templates
Monitoring
Training
• Governance is about
the day-to-day
realization of your
strategy
• Governance is about
changing behaviour

60. Creating intranet content guide
— Free download:
www.clearbox.co.uk/
intranet_content/
— 10 sections on:
• Headlines
• Images
• Page layout
• Social content
• Mobile content

61. 8. Excluding half your
workforce

62. 8. Excluding half your workforce
— Not worrying about
factory people
— Not worrying about mobile
workers
— Locking out partners and
contractors

65. Barclays mobile

66. Hubbit

67. Beem

68. 9. Only planning the launch

69. “Our new intranet based
on SharePoint 2007 will
help us connect,
communicate and
collaborate more
effectively.
It will help us share
knowledge, find
information and break
down silos”

70. “Our new intranet based
on SharePoint 2007
2013 will help us
connect, communicate
and collaborate more
effectively.
It will help us share
knowledge, find
information and break
down silos”

71. 3 Things that are hard to kill

72. 80% of organisations with
SharePoint continue
emailing documents back
and forth
-- Usamp survey 2010

73. Harmon.ie example

74. 9. Post-launch planning
— SharePoint intranets are like launching a magazine,
not a book
— Don’t think ‘project’ think ‘service’
— Have a CoE that provides internal consultancy,
implementation and support
— Budget for future customizations and add-ons
For more see: www.clearbox.co.uk/what-to-do-after-the-launch-of-your-intranet-part-1/

75. 10. No strategy

76. SharePoint is like a Swiss army knife...

77. ...but if only it was that simple

78. Users should experience SharePoint as
something configured to their specific needs

79. Single
place
to
collaborate
Capability
Benefit
Outcome
“One”
Organisation
Strategic
Feature
Goals
All
employees
Single
identity
see
same
msg.
Corp-­‐Wide
News
Hub
Comms
2-­‐way
comms
Employee
Community
engagement
discussions
Less
churn
Customer
satisfaction
Time
savings
Response
times
faster
Better
stock
Fewer
outages
SAP
Dashboard
control
Quicker
access
to
data
Flexible
project
resourcing
Best
people
on
Team
Sites
a
task
Benefits mapping

80. A good SharePoint strategy…
• Sets out how SharePoint supports the organisation’s
strategy
• Is responsive to changes in business need
• Has clear, time-bound milestones
• Addresses people and behaviour issues

81. 1.1
1.4
1.3 1.2
1.0
2.4
2.0
3.0
Big launch strategy
2.1
2.3 2.2

82. Idea
Feasibility
Pilot
Review
Scale
Continuous evolution strategy

83. Questions to ask when SP comes along

84. Questions to ask when SP comes along
Strategy & Governance
1. What does the business want to achieve with SharePoint?
2. What goals does it support? What problems does it solve?
3. Who owns overall strategy?
4. What metrics and KPIs will we have?
5. What ROI do we need to demonstrate?
Design
1. What navigation structure do we need?
2. What are the standards for branding and templates for layout?
For team sites too?
3. What permissions and security model do we need?

85. Questions to ask when SP comes along
Launch and expansion
1. What content needs migrating? Who is responsible?
2. What features will be available immediately?
3. What is the roadmap for adding more features?
4. What process is used for deciding the roadmap?
5. What training will be needed?
Operations
1. What are the criteria for getting a site?
2. What are the criteria for removing a site?
3. Who decides?
4. What are the responsibilities for being a site or content owner?
5. How robust must the system be (from a business perspective)

86. THANK YOU!
www.clearbox.co.uk
@sammarshall